Tech Giant Purchases Data Firm Looker -- WSJ
June 07 2019 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Rob Copeland and Aisha Al-Muslim
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2019).
Google has made a long-awaited acquisition to bolster its
cloud-computing business, a booming industry where it has trailed
rivals.
The Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled a deal on Thursday to acquire
Looker, a business-intelligence software and big- data analytics
platform, for $2.6 billion in cash. The two companies were well
acquainted; Alphabet earlier invested in Looker through its
venture-capital arm CapitalG.
The move indicates Google will continue to pour resources into
its Google Cloud division as it remains far behind rivals
Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp in cloud computing. The area is
a priority of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, who replaced
the unit's head, Diane Greene, with ex- Oracle executive Thomas
Kurian earlier this year. Analysts have long speculated an
acquisition as likely.
Yet Google Cloud remains problematic. Just this weekend, Google
reported widespread rolling outages in the U.S. that dramatically
slowed crucial Google services like Gmail, YouTube and Google Cloud
Storage for much of Sunday. The disruption, which reduced regional
network capacity, was caused by an incorrectly applied
configuration change, Google said.
The acquisition builds on an existing partnership between Google
and Looker, which share more than 350 joint customers, such as
BuzzFeed Inc. and Sunrun Inc., the companies said. The deal is
expected to be completed later this year, pending regulatory
approval.
The addition of Looker to Google's cloud-computing business will
give customers more capability to analyze data and create
visualizations from the information, Google said.
Looker, whose software is used to connect to databases like
Amazon's Redshift and Microsoft's SQL Server, will continue to
support cloud databases from vendors other than Google, said Looker
CEO Frank Bien.
"We remain committed to our multi-cloud strategy and will retain
and expand Looker's capabilities to analyze data across Clouds,"
Mr. Kurian said in prepared remarks.
Looker previously raised about $280 million from venture-capital
firms including Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital and
PivotNorth Capital.
Google's latest deal to bolster its cloud offerings comes as
federal regulators ramp up scrutiny of large technology companies
and the influence they wield.
The Wall Street Journal has reported the Justice Department is
gearing up for an antitrust probe of Google, whose reach extends
from online search and advertising to smartphone technology and its
YouTube video platform.
Write to Rob Copeland at rob.copeland@wsj.com and Aisha
Al-Muslim at aisha.al-muslim@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Sunrun Inc. is the name of one
of the firms that both Google and Looker have as a customer. An
earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the company's
name as SunRrun.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 07, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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